Teaching with joy and purpose
Kwami overcomes childhood trauma to share faith with students
Kwami overcomes childhood trauma to share faith with students
As he blows his whistle and cues a boisterous group of second graders to move across the gym floor at Mater Dei Academy, 28-year-old Kwami Adoboe-Herrera reflects on his own childhood. Compared to the joyful children he sees hopping and skipping around him, Kwami was a sad and troubled boy.
As he blows his whistle and cues a boisterous group of second graders to move across the gym floor at Mater Dei Academy, 28-year-old Kwami Adoboe-Herrera reflects on his own childhood. Compared to the joyful children he sees hopping and skipping around him, Kwami was a sad and troubled boy.
“I went through some pretty horrendous evil in my life as a young kid. I was abused while I was going to school,” he recalled. An extended family member brought him to the United States from Africa at age 7 under the pretense of providing educational opportunities. Kwami said while he was enrolled in school, he was also forced into domestic labor, working all hours of the day and night. He was also subjected to frequent beatings and starvation.
It was a sixth-grade teacher who noticed Kwami was malnourished, sleep-deprived and withdrawn.
“I had a teacher who really saw the signs of abuse, and she helped me to get out of that situation,” he said. “And one of the things that I’ve learned as a teacher is that teachers say this all the time, ‘If I can save one life, I’ve done my job.’ And that teacher who saved my life did her job.”
Just as his sixth-grade teacher was an angel to him, Kwami hopes to identify and help students who may be going through traumatic experiences. “That’s why I went to college to get an education degree, so I can be a teacher and help other students who might be going through something,” Kwami said.
This is Kwami’s second year teaching at Mater Dei, where he enjoys sharing his Catholic faith with the students. “Being a gym teacher, I get to see every single student,” Kwami said. “We try to begin and end each class with a prayer. My goal is to teach the kids to pray and how to love and respect each other.”
Kwami credits his faith with giving him the grace and strength to forgive his childhood abuser. He has also become an advocate for human trafficking survivors. In November 2024, he founded Teleios, a nonprofit specifically tailored to help male victims. Kwami remembers how isolated and alone he felt while being exploited and he does not want any other boy to endure such pain.
“Despite growing awareness of human trafficking, male survivors remain profoundly overlooked — especially when it comes to access to safe, stable housing. At Teleios, we are boldly committed to changing that,” Kwami said.
Kwami is thankful for the opportunities that have been afforded to him to heal from his own childhood trauma and grow in his faith through his advocacy work and teaching at a Catholic school.
“We have to allow God to work through us and we have to thank God for all that we have,” he added.
